


Crooked Mile

by Helsabot



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/M, M/M, angsty angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-06
Updated: 2015-01-06
Packaged: 2018-03-06 09:07:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,515
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3128948
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Helsabot/pseuds/Helsabot
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Will patches himself up convincingly.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Crooked Mile

**Author's Note:**

> a standalone thing for Haanigram because I can't sleep

Will patches himself up convincingly.

He only notices the scar on the rare occasions he catches himself naked in the mirror. He marches his briefcase into his classes like his students aren’t all wondering, and he makes a point of looking Jack in the eye when he’s expected to shy away.

Molly spends more and more nights in Wolf Trap. Molly, with her eyebrows painting her face perma-sympathetic. They fret above her doe eyes as she washes and he dries.

“I don’t like the way he talks to you,” she says, handing him a plate. It’s Hannibal’s; small, sweet-tasting things had come foil-wrapped to his door one night. He’d promised he’d return the china.

“And how is that?”

Molly pushes a handful of forks into his hands with some aggression. “Like you’re a particularly useful nuisance.”

Will manages not to let the utensils clatter to the floor. He lays them on the counter and works at them one by one.

“I’d say that’s fairly accurate.”

“It’s demeaning.”

Will shrugs. “I’m not that interested in what he thinks of me. I come in, I do my job, I leave.”

She turns to him at that. “He’s your _friend!_ ”

Maybe, at a time. But then Hannibal bled them half-dead, and then Bella slipped away one warm night, and then… well, they haven’t been fishing in a year.

She shakes her head. “It’s demeaning.”

 

 

\---

 

 

He had Abigail cremated.

He held on to her ashes for too many months, until one of the dogs nearly knocked the urn over. He’d burst into tears at the thought of her spilled across the floor once more, so he wrapped her in his arms and carried her to the river. He set her free and sat on the bank till night seeped through his shoes and nipped at his toes.

 

 

\---

 

 

Many weeks after the fact, he fists his cock violently and grits his teeth against the sounds that want to escape: Angry, fuck-ready, gnarling, and deeply sad all at once. He’s worked two fingers up himself, but the angle threatens to snap his wrist, and he swears loudly and gives up. He buries his face in his hands, his fingers smelling of himself. His brain tries to make sense of the dark his palms are pushing into his vision. The prickling patterns don’t look like anything in particular.

If he’d actually kept seeing that psychiatrist – the one they’d forced upon him before he’d even been handed his own bloodied clothes back – would he tell her this? That most afternoons, when he is meant to be recovering quietly and considering a different career path, he is fucking himself furiously to fantasies that should make his stomach turn. They should, but they don’t. Where the light leaving Abigail’s eyes should expose him, there is Hannibal’s shadow. Where the childlike syllables of Alana’s stilted speech should reach him, there is only Hannibal’s silence.

Hannibal never speaks in those terrible dreams. He fucks, and god dammit, he _adores_ – but he never speaks.

 

 

\---

 

 

“Why don’t you come out with us?” suggests Zeller. 

Price turns, a smile erupting across his face. “Yeah! I’ll even let Zee pay for you.” 

Will smiles, and there’s some genuine amusement there. “That’s all right. Thanks.”

“Oh, come _ooooonnnn_ ,” chides Price. “Another one bites the dust, courtesy of Will Graham! Surprise-surprise. You deserve a drink.”

It doesn’t feel like much of a victory to Will, and it certainly doesn’t feel like cause for celebration. The woman they’d arrested that evening was suffering from a multitude of mental disorders. She had no memory of killing any of those people, and the confused tears that followed Will’s explanation broke his heart. He didn’t allow himself to over-think his sympathy.

“No, really – some other time. I’m tired.”

“Suit yourself. _I_ need a drink before I start sampling the formaldehyde. Lead the way, o designated driver.”

Price and Zeller bicker their way out of earshot, and Will spends the better half of the night among the dead.

 

 

\--

 

 

He wonders what Molly would think. He draws pictures with Willy, who is thrilled that someone shares his name. The Crayola crayons have ridiculous labels, and he explains them to Willy one after the other.

“Inchworm?” Will repeats. “It’s a little caterpillar. A little green caterpillar. It inches along, like this—” Will raises his index finger into the air and waggles it along some invisible branch. He makes silly sound effects, and Willy giggles.

“What’s this one?” 

Will takes the proffered stick of yellow wax. “Maize. It’s another word for ‘corn’. The first word, actually. I think. That’s what the Native Americans called it.”

“ _Maize_.” Willy tries it out on his tongue.

They draw dogs made bumpy by the hardwood floor and they eat haldfulls of Goldfish crackers.

Will finds himself unable to describe “Atomic Tangerine”. He finds himself wondering what Molly would think.

 

 

\--

 

 

There was a night, before _that_ night, where Hannibal had filled Will’s crystal too many times.

They sat facing the fireplace, and Will thought in that moment that maybe he really could run away with him. Right then, he really could. If only his eyelids weren’t so heavy.

“We went to this old house, er—” Will slouched in the chair. “—on a school trip. This old house, it was supposed to be the oldest house in Mississippi, or something like that. It’s funny, on the bus ride over there, I imagined what it would be like, I was so excited about it for some reason. Curious. I made up this mansion in my head, and when we got there, it looked nothing like it. My mansion. It’s funny, mine felt more real.”

Hannibal had watched him curiously, something amused in the seam of his lips. Will spared him a glance and laughed a little, suddenly self-conscious.

“I’m sorry, I don’t know why I’m telling you this. Oh. _Oh_ , yeah, it was the – the fireplace. It had this screen, and a lot of the things in that house were weird, the low-hung doors and this… what was it, this _doll_? That women would show to a doctor, they, they’d – they’d point to where it hurt so they didn’t have to undress. But this _screen_ , by the fire… I could be remembering it wrong, but I swear they told us that this screen was there so that the firelight didn’t fall on the women’s faces. I’m not sure why? I can’t remember… something about it spoiling their complexion, or… something about it marring their face. Faces. Like they didn’t want it coloring their skin. That was the strangest thing in the house. It’s stuck with me.”

Will had been very drunk, and he thought that he was glad there wasn’t a screen here. He was blushing and he didn’t know why, but surely it must have looked like nothing more than the reflected heat.

“I hadn’t heard of such a thing,” replied Hannibal after a while. “I’ll have to look it up.”

Will had winced at the way it sounded – like gentle humoring. But then Hannibal had said:

“I’d never hide the way it lights your face.”

When Will had turned to look back at him, Hannibal’s eyes were lost in the flames.

 

 

\---

 

 

 

“My name is Will Graham,” he tells himself. He means to say more, recite blatant facts the way he was taught to. But the walls of his home are solid, and the clock on the mantel ticks obediently.

 

 

\---

 

It’s a still-dark Tuesday morning, halfway to the coffee machine, where Will comes to terms with the knowledge that there is something wrong with him. Not wrong with him in an _encephalitis_ way, or in a _borderline-autistic_ way: Wrong with him a frighteningly fundamental way that has him in love with the devil.

He believes only in coincidence, so he doesn’t let himself fall prey to magical thinking when Jack calls him. He wonders how long he’s been standing there, rooted to the kitchen floor in his boxers. He looks around the room for his mobile.

Jack’s voice is certain:

“How’s your Italian?”

He had always expected a rush of adrenaline when this moment came. Something inside of him is distantly fascinated at the calm that numbs his lips and fingertips.

“When do we leave?”

“Tomorrow, nine-ten p.m.”

Will shakes his head, grips the phone too-tightly. “No. _No_ – now. We’re leaving now.”

“Will—”

“What if he’s gone by then, what if—”

“ _Will._ I have six more phone calls to make after this one, I’ve got a brief I need to have ready by noon. I’ll get you there as soon as I can, but that’s not going to be until _tomorrow._ _Night_.”

Will is silent.

“Will? Do you understand?”

Will nods, like that will convey anything over the line.

Jack sighs on the other end.

“...maybe it’s not a good idea for you—”

“ _No_. No. I’m coming. I’ll be there. I’m—I’ll be there in two hours, and then – tomorrow, nine-ten, tomorrow night. I’ll be there.”

He ends the call before Jack can.

And it’s with a heart half-damned that he beats the sun to Quantico.


End file.
